Unedited
“Didn’t you just call me?”
“Did you… did you ever think you were being overly self-conscious?”
“Did you really have to answer no in such an asshole way?”
Even as I was kicking my childhood friend in frustration, the suffocating feeling continued to rise. My chest tightened, and my heart beat rapidly.
“Ari!”
Once again, a voice pierced my ears.
“No! I heard it! It was definitely your voice!”
“Poor Ari. You miss me so much that you hear my voice even when I’m right next to you.”
Kyle sarcastically said. Just as I was about to retort with a string of colorful curses, a sharp pain stabbed my temple. It’s time to go. Well, if it wasn’t Cornelia Villard’s bravado to be called the Siren of the Thameni River, more than enough time had passed for her to pull me out of the lake.
“Ariel!”
As I clutched my head and staggered, the hallucinations continued to circle me.
“Open your eyes!”
It felt like it was getting closer.
“Please!”
No, it’s definitely closer!
My consciousness, trapped in a tepid current, slowly emerged. My senses went completely numb, then extremely sharp. I felt my mouth being forced open by something like a lump of flesh, and the next moment, a gust of wind rushed in. After the same process was repeated three or four times, I realized that I had not been breathing the whole time.
Pain came over me as if it had been waiting. I coughed violently, spitting out water instead of air. After that, the surroundings suddenly became brighter.
I forced my heavy eyelids open, and drenched red hair filled my vision. It was Kyle. He was crying tirelessly. Or maybe he was just wet. Either way, his face was a mess.
“Ari, heuk… are… are you okay… ?”
“What, you’re really crying.”
His voice, hoarse and barely above a whisper, confirmed that Kyle was both wet and crying. As I mumbled dumbly, Brianna jumped in and scolded me.
“Of course he’s crying! Are you out of your mind? Do you have a death wish?”
Bree was holding my hand and imbuing it with a tenuous amount of holy power. Her expression was quite grim. Cornelia, who was a few steps away, twisting the hem of her dress and squeezing out water, looked at me in disbelief.
“I didn’t mean to die… .”
Sure, jumping into the lake out of nowhere during a boat ride would make anyone look crazy, suicidal, or crazy and suicidal. But I had a good reason. Just when I was about to say something in rebuttal, a strong force lifted my waist halfway. Soon, a cold cloth and warm body enveloped me all at once.
“This is why I… I tried not to drag you in, I… .”
Kyle’s whispers were so quiet that I could barely hear them.
“Please, Ariel… If you die, I will die too… .”
He pleaded, burying his lips in the nape of my neck. The words piled on top of each other, tracing the gentle curve of my shoulder and pressing on my throat. So I didn’t find the will to say, ‘There were circumstances,’ or, ‘I’m alive, so all is fine.’ That seemed too cruel.
“You kissed me.”
“Hey, r-right now… is that… t-that… You idiot!”
Feigning nonchalance, I teased, and his stumbling, angry response was funny and somewhat endearing. I laughed, threw up water, and then laughed again.
Nilla’s dress, said to be the Siren of the Thameni River, was fine above the waist. Kyle, on the other hand, was a mess from his toes to the top of his head. Every part of him that touched me was soaked. Perhaps it was not Cornelia who pulled me out of the bottom of Lake Fraswell, but her brother.
The fact that my place in Kyle’s heart was greater than his phobia saddened me. That’s because I didn’t have the confidence to rescue him from hanging on the branch of a holly tree. My admirable and pitiful childhood friend. Of all people, he had to fall for someone as heartless as Ariel Dalton.
***
The eventful summer vacation is over. For a fifth grader like me, it was also my last summer break. Since the subjects that Bree and I took in the second semester were not easy (she had to take Elemental Magic Defense, which was not at all her aptitude, and I had to take Ancient Magic and Legends, which was not only not my aptitude but was also notoriously difficult), we dragged our feet like cattle being led to the slaughter and headed to Fitzsimmons.
There have been interesting changes at Fitzsimmons in the meantime. For instance, the Fortune Telling course, which had been taught by part-time instructors for some time, was finally assigned to a full-time professor. The name of the professor from Nadon who will teach fortune telling on behalf of Miss Proctor, now Mrs. Kirkpatrick, was ‘Paula Alvarado.’ Kelly Ramirez’s spiritual mentor, ‘Aunt Paula’, became a professor at Fitzsimmons!
As far as I know, one of Miss Alvarado’s accomplishments as a fortune teller was to predict the disaster that almost befell Marquis Ramírez. The year before, she’d been going around telling Kelly that she saw death around her, which made her buy a lot of suspicious items. If she had predicted that Kelly’s ex-boyfriend, Casey, would write ‘Hope for the future’ as ‘Hope for the funeral’, it could have been two. .
In any case, she is not skilled enough to be considered a professor. I was pretty sure her background was pretty messy, given her position as Fortune Telling professor. Madame Bartlett probably felt that admitting special students from commoner backgrounds was enough to absolve her of any accusations of corruption in faculty hiring.
Fortunately, my friends, who were at the crossroads of their lives, were safe. Elizabeth McCarthy, Brennan Stokes, and Anais O’Brien. Liz, who had nothing more than a purse and a dress when she left Fitzsimmons, now wore jewelry in her earlobes and fingers to show how much gold she had earned.
Brennan, on the other hand, looked pale despite being well dressed. Elizabeth said it was because he drank heavily while mingling with miners. Since every good fortune comes with a price, I just nodded.
As for Anais, her bold endeavor had created such a buzz that practically every Fitzsimmons student was talking about her short brown hair—not the kind that fell coyly over her shoulders or below her ears, but the kind that exposed the entire back of her neck.
Nonetheless, she was still O’Brien’s rose. If anything, adding androgynous charm to her elegant and noble image only attracted a large number of girls, making her existing group of followers grow even larger. The only girl who expressed dissatisfaction with Anais’s choice was Kendra Bradley, who previously had the only short brown hair in Fitzsimmons. She complained that Anais overshadowed her presence, especially with the student council elections coming up.
It wasn’t just Anais’ appearance that changed. She decided to continue adhering to the laws in her ‘New Bible’. She was still quiet and reserved, but she was no longer hiding. Maurice Sweeney, who always unwittingly picked on her, was sent to the infirmary on the first day of school after two punches from Anais landed in her face.
I heard she even signed up for the swordsmanship course in her second semester. Thanks to this, Jacqueline Faulkner’s life at the academy became difficult as she had to do everything with Anais. Unlike O’Brien’s rose, which bloomed late, Faulkner, as far as I know, did not have much interest or talent in swordsmanship. Poor Faulkner. Professor Moore is very uptight.
In the first semester, I witnessed the girls with soft arms who took swordsmanship classes, aiming to get close to Bolton or Jaden, meet two extreme ends. One, they would withdraw from the course, clutching their battered bodies. Two, they would transform into strong and resolute warriors. Faulkner, who could never be either the former or the latter, needed to pioneer a third path. I was so curious about what it would be that I couldn’t sleep.
Moreover, the Nadon twins, who always seemed to be together, appeared split in half. We had already heard during the vacation that Bryce Nadon had been attacked by an assassin at his birthday banquet. He hadn’t been able to return to the academy because he was recovering. When I found out that the one who returned was Lancaster’s roommate, I felt a wave of relief wash over me. How selfish of me.
The biggest of Fitzsimmons’ interesting changes involved Keran Illestia, who hadn’t sought me out at all after his one visit to Dalton Manor, and it wasn’t until after school started that I realized why.
Christa Edwards of the newspaper department devoted an entire page of the Fitzsimmons Times to describing the ‘Kerrose’ couple. She talked about their perfect looks and their vast different statuses. The painting depicting the romantic date scene between the two was definitely more impressive than any famous painting I’ve ever seen.
When the image of Keran tenderly stroking Blossom’s cheek appeared for the seventh time, I folded the newspaper and threw it in the trash. As I lay face down on the bed, scratching the flower pattern embroidery on the pillow with my fingernails, a thought occurred to me.
Why am I so depressed? What’s the big deal about Keran and Blossom dating?
Of course, I was in a position where I was struggling to take Blossom’s place. However, there was absolutely no case in which the two did not form a relationship over the course of the repeated nine months. This means that it is a fully predictable development. So why was I feeling such immense disappointment?
Suddenly, I remembered a story I heard a while ago from a childhood friend who liked me very much. He said that when he found out that I was seeing Adam Walsh, he realized that he had feelings for me. He was frustrated and angry.
I felt frustrated too. And angry. Does that mean I like Keran?
I looked closely and saw that the flower embroidered on my pillow was a begonia. According to Brianna Mosley, who likes to to pretend she knew every flower she saw since reading <3,600 Flower Dictionary for Novice Potion Makers>, the flower language of begonia was ‘unrequited love.’
I turned over the pillow to hide my poor love, which was ruined as soon as I realized it, from my view. When I buried my face on it, there was a musty smell.
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